The author, former union leader and former priest John Shields discusses the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, faith, the relationship between spirituality and science, and his recent book The Priest Who Left His Religion: In Pursuit of Cosmic Spirituality (Influence Publishers, 2011), with Joseph Planta.
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The Priest Who Left His Religion: In Pursuit of Cosmic Spirituality by John Shields (Influence Publishers, 2011).
Click to buy this book from Amazon.ca: The Priest Who Left His Religion [1] |
Text of introduction by Joseph Planta:
I am Planta: On the Line, in Vancouver at TheCommentary.ca.
John Shields joins me now. If you’ve followed British Columbia politics in the last 30 years or so, he’s a familiar name. He was active for many years in the labour movement here, culminating in fourteen years as president of the BC Government and Service Employees Union. He joins me today not to talk about that, rather his life before and after his years in the labour sector. Mr. Shields was born in New York City, and received a graduate degree in theology from St. Paul’s College in Washington, DC. He’d worked with Martin Luther King Jr., and taught theology on both sides of the border. An ordained priest in the Roman Catholic Church, he left it in the 1960s. In light of the Benedict XVI’s resignation as Pope, it’ll be interesting to get Mr. Shields’s take on the contemporary church and where it’s headed. Over the last twenty years, he’s taken a keen interest in the connection between science and spirituality. He’s got a deep interest in contemporary cosmology, so we’ll reflect on that too. He recently published a book, The Priest Who Left His Religion: In Pursuit of Cosmic Spirituality. It’s from Influence Publishers, and you can get it on Amazon, as well as through his own website, www.johntshields.ca [2]. Please welcome to the Planta: On the Line program, John Shields; Mr. Shields, good morning.
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